Philip Jenkins has written an interesting paper on the dodgy background of current scholarly images of Christ. Yesterday it was Madame Blavatskaya, today it’s Elaine Pagels. I had been inclined, in a broadbrush fashion, to view most current New Testament scholarship as a bunch of experts turning their predilections into expertise. Jenkins provides a more detailed but not inconsistent story. (For more discussion of scholarly theories current today, see Phillip Schaff’s History of the Christian Church, most recently revised in 1890—Jenkins is right that things don’t change much.)